A builder from Lower Hutt has his wife to thank for becoming the first New Zealander to play guitar and yodel at the world's largest rodeo festival.
Roger Tibbs has been invited to next month's Calgary Stampede, the biggest outdoor event in Canada and the world's largest rodeo event.
More than 1.2 million people attended the stampede last year and more than a million are expected this year, many of them to see acts like American singer-songwriter James Taylor, British/Kiwi pop singer Natasha Bedingfield and American country duo The Judds.
Mr Tibbs has performed for audiences of 2500 in Australia, where he became the only New Zealand man to win a Tamworth Gold Guitar award, but up to 10,000 could see him play in Calgary.
Mr Tibbs, 49, and wife Denise were already going to Canada for the stampede in July, but Mrs Tibbs secretly e-mailed the organisers to see if they would be interested in having her renowned guitarist and yodeller husband play.
"I knew we were going up there so I thought, I'll be cheeky and send an e-mail. I didn't tell Rog at that time because I thought if I didn't get a reply, it wouldn't hurt him," she said.
But when she got an interested response, she told him what she had done and they sent off some of his recordings for consideration.
"In May, I opened up my e-mails and it was from the coordinator of the stampede, asking me if we'd like to be part of it. Then I was just leaping up like a lunatic."
Mr Tibbs will play a half-hour set of Canadian covers, "just to be in vogue up there, plus a couple of yodelling songs which is what I do".
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